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SERMON xhso 

PREACHED TO THE 

FIRST CONGllEGATIONAL CHURCH AND 
SOCIETY IN EXETER, 

ON THE DAY OF THE 

IN 

NEW-HAMPSHIRE, 

Nov. 29, 1821. 



BY SAMUEL P. WILLIAMS, 

PASTOR OF A CHURCH IN NEWBURXTORT, 



PRINTED FOR THE CHURCH AND SOCIETY, 
BY W. & J. GILMAN, 

PRINTERS AND BOOKSELLERS, NO. 9, STATE-STREET, 
NEWBURYPORT. 






LUKE ix. 58. 

FOXES HAVE HOLES, AND BIRDS OF THE AIR HAVE NESTS, BUT 
THE SON OF MAN HATH NOT WHERE TO LAY HIS HEAD* 

OO mysterious are the ways of God ! 
He whom angels adore, becomes an outcast from the 
society of men. He to whom all creatures owe their 
being, is subjected to privations which his compassion 
suffers not even a brute to endure. 

The birds range freelj in the firmament his hands 
spread out, and pinched with cold and hunger, fly to 
serener skies, and build their nests among the trees of 
unreaped fields. There, protected from the hand of 
the oppressor, they rear their young, and fill up the 
measure of their life, in almost uninterrupted joy. 

The beast flies from the haunts of men, and takes 
his repose at pleasure, secure of his meat from God. 
But the Lord of life, by whom all things consist, has not 
in all this wide dominion, a covert, which he is allowed 
of men, to call his own ; and is indebted when he dies, 
to private friendship, rather than to the influence of 
common humanity, for the privilege of a grave. 

What means the language of such providences ? 
Is it a fable? Or is there, as the fool has said, no God? 
No, my brethren, we follow no cunningly devised fable. 
There is neither cunning, nor defect of justice here. 



The art of man is overmatched, and while in this 
strange and oppressive scene, the cross of Christ is 
foolishness to them who perish, it unravels a plot, in 
which the eye of faith discerns, both the operation and 
perfections of God. The explanation of this mystery 
is given us in the fact, that the humble condition of our 
Lord Jesus Christ, proceeded not from the dereliction 
of God, or his own impotence, but from his unconstrain- 
ed grace. He was rich, but for our sakes voluntarily 
became poor ; and in him who is the brightness of the 
Father's glory, we behold a worm, and no man : a form 
marred, disfigured, and despised of the people. 

But was he thus humbled and ultimately cut off, for 

himself? If hot, the sentiment derived from the text is 

a sentiment appropriate to the considerations of the day. 

The poverty of Jesus Christ is the riches of the world, 

and all our enjoyments the fruit of his mediation. 

Lend me your attention while I enumerate, first, the 
capital blessings in our possession, and next, shew how 
they all flow from the humiliation of Jesus Christ. 

1. Among the good things to be enumerated and for 
which we this day acknowledge our indebtedness to God, 
Is life ; that possession which is alone common to man ; 
a blessing, which lies at the foundation of every enjoy- 
ment, both of the highest and lowest kind. Between 
this, and non-existence, how incomprehensible the dif- 
ference ! Attempt a conception of nothingness, contract 
if you can the powers of your nature, to that which is 
not, and you w r ill begin to look even upon animal life as 
a good, and perfect gift of God. Add to this inceptive 
good, to this capacity for enjoyment, the animal life 
which is peculiar to man ! Examine the organization of 
liis frame, how fearful, how curious, how wonderful ! 



His organs of perception, how numerous, how suscepti- 
ble of gratification, how well adapted to the state in 
which we exist, and the objects which surround us ! 
Which of all these organs will you spare ? Of which a- 
mong all those objects will you like to be divested ? Is 
it the eye ? It is the inlet of ten thousand beauties ! the 
centinel which guards you against ten thousand dangers! 
Multiply into each other the number of those beauties 
and dangers, and the product is the amount of your pos- 
sible pleasures from this single organ. 

Who filled the streets of Jerusalem with moans and 
bitter lamentations ? Who is it that arrests with his cries 
that constant friend of the sufferer, who had no place to 
rest the limbs, grown weary in going about to do good ? 
It is a man, dead to all these pleasures. A man, from 
whose sightless eyeballs, the varied works of God thro' 
all the visible creation, reflect no image of divine per- 
fection. It is the mother of a youth, dark from his 
birth, denied through all his life, a single look on her 
that bare him. Such privation might, have been yours. 
The sovereignty of God which so aitlicted him, has ex- 
empted you. You lift your eyes to heaven, and suns 
and stars, and planets lend you all their influence, and 
fill you with sublime amazement. You cast them round 
upon the objects you delight in, and rove at pleasure 
through all nature's works, independent of an earthly 
hand, to guard or guide you. What would purchase of 
you these organs, through which the souls of others as- 
sociate with your own ; through which, without any la- 
bor, you seize on every thing in the works of nature, 
and of art, which can instruct, improve, and entertain ! 

Thus the physical and moral world, are made trib- 
utary to your enjoyment, and every object which forms 



6 

an image on the eye, bespeaks for him who made it, an 
interest in our best affections, and makes a strong de- 
mand upon our gratitude. 

How sad is the condition of the desolate islander, 
vrho never interchanges a thought with his fellow man! 
To that condition, more embittered by the consciousness 
of his existence in the midst of society, and in sight of 
all the cheerfulness its social intercourse inspires, is the 
deaf reduced. O how heavy his hours of disease, and 
doubt, and mental suffering, while all the consolations, 
and sympathies by w 7 hich a generous friend would re- 
lieve him, are shut out, because he has not ears to hear. 
And when he casts himself at last on that bed from 
which he is never more to rise, how unutterably awful 
that dread, with which a vast unknown, comes over his 
departing soul. He that hath ears to hear, let him say 

t claims for this, God who makes him to differ, has 
upon his gratitude. 

Are the other senses of man less coveted sources of 
pleasure ? And are they not equally, a part of life, a 
part of man ? But valuable as they may be to all per- 
cipient beings, what are they in birds, and beasts, and 
reptiles ! Man, has a rational nature, and his animal life 
is bui (he servant of a spirit, to which the inspiration of 

almighty has given understanding. Add then to 
the description of human life, the affections of the heart, 
the facul ties of the mind, which exalt you to the first rank 
of living beings on the earth. All else below us, made 
not for themselves, but for man's use. They live for 
an end they know not, and cannot know, and die at 
man's decree. 

2. By tiie determinate counsel of the Most High, 
man, in the second place, is possessed of immortality. 



Life on any terms is as we have already shewn, a bless- 
ing. Such a life as ours, a blessing of incalculable worth. 
But shall it end? Shall it cease forever? Annihilation 
is a dreadful thought, and it is fit to ask, as we see our 
natures wasting away, in the death of our fellow men, 
is all that is comDrehended in the o-ift of life forever 
lost ! The organs cease to act, the senses no longer 
convey instruction and delight to die inhabitant with- 
in, and the erect and noble mansion lies prostrate and 
in ruins. But it is onlv the mansion we behold. The 
tenant is not there. Man cannot die. He has only re- 
linquished his place, till it be fitted up, a new and no- 
bler edifice, adapted to a new and nobler state of being. 
Thus favor upon favor, falls upon thy head, first born 
of earth, and kindred with the heavens. Already you 
have life : in a few days your life will be immortal. 

3. But there is in our present existence a portion 
which much enhances the value of this gift. It is liberty. 
I say nothing of the sacredness of its name, of the rap- 
tures wdiich its first gift inspires, nor of the tranquillity 
its continuance imparts. I only point you to the phi) 
inhabitants of those shores where " a scorching sun has 
burned upon them a darker complexion. 5 ' Look at 
yonder African. His form, his countenance, his gener- 
ous services, his emotions, intelligence, and tenderness 
of affection, all tell you, that he is still " a man and a 
brother." He lives, but it is only to supply the place of 
reason in the brute. He has active limbs, but they are 
his misfortune, since but for these he would no longer 
wear a chain. He thinks, but it can be only of calami- 
ty and oppression, or of death, and that tribunal, at 
which there is no respect of persons. Even the sighs 
and groans which grief instinctively, and nature invohm- 



8 

tarily heaves, are enjoyed by him only at the expense 
of blood. Even that look of dejection with which the 
God of nature has marked the face of the oppressed, is 
to him but the precursor of the knout, or club. Torn 
from the region and reach of those ties which God has 
sanctified ; separated from the very name of country, 
home, and friend ; a prisoner on the ocean, which is the 
common of the globe ; then sold like the ox for drudg- 
ery, and fastened to the wheel for life ; he lives to ex- 
hibit to mankind the difference between life and enjoy- 
ment ; and to give standing evidence of a fact of which 
no oppressor is yet thoroughly convinced, that the day 
of retribution is to come. In that day liberty hitherto 
abused, and desecrated in her own temple, will put off 
her sackcloth, and many a slave change complexions 
with his master. Without anticipating the equalizing 
measures of that day, we cannot be innocent and yet 
unmindful of our freedom. Look at your hands ! no 
manacles confine them. Look for your masters ! earth 
cannot produce them. Look over your fields ! they are 
uncultivated or tilled according to your own pleasure. 
Behold your children ! no brand has burned upon them 
the curse of Canaan, and already inscribed on their 
foreheads the poor Africans' destiny, the victim of na- 
tional avarice and individual despotism. You are con- 
fined to no place by force. The world is your country. 
Law protects the virtuous ; and who is he that dare 
harm you, if ye be followers of that which is good ? 

4. In the fourth place you are secure. To learn- 
my meaning, cast your eyes across the ocean, visit the 
shores of half the eastern continent. The lives of hun- 
dreds of millions, hang on the brow of half a score of 
despots ; of men capricious as the winds, selfish as the 



9 

heart bred in caverns, and greedy as the jaws of death. 
In most of the barbarous, and in some of the civilized 
countries of the east, to be rich is to provoke banish- 
ment or death, and to be poor is to be destitute of ev- 
ery thing, for the security of which by human power, 
a wise man would ever pray. 

Here, every man sits under his vine. The trees 
he planted yield him their shade ; and of the fruits 
he rears another eats not but with his consent. Here, 
the powers ordained of God, hold out the golden scep- 
tre to the obedient citizen, and raise the sword of ven- 
geance over the man who interrupts his chosen avoca- 
tion ; who even threatens to deprive us of the good for 
which we labor. For a well earned name, there is hon- 
or ; for crime, there waits the prison and the post. The 
law of private wrong, is no more, eye for eye, but pub- 
lic justice holds the " balance and the rod ;" gives pun- 
ishment adequate to general safety or reparation com- 
mensurate with injury ; affords protection and defence 
in all the extent which human forecast and strength can 
provide, and grants security in the terrors of the law, 
and the barriers of that public sentiment which pro- 
duced its enaction, and which vindicates the application 
of its sanctions. 

5. You share, in the fifth place, with our common 
country the blessing of peace. 

The world often shakes with the noise of battle and 
the inhabitants are convulsed at the sound of the trum- 
pet and the alarm of war. In the hurry of flight the in- 
vaded eat their bread, and the cries of distress cease to 
excite commiseration. Consternation seizes the cities 
that were wholly at ease and quiet, and the apostles 



10 

of death, fire famine and pestilence scour the earth, to 
depopulate the kingdom of peace. To such a state of 
wretchedness our passions lead us; and not unfrequently, 
but for divine restraint, would embroil us in such wretch- 
edness. But we sit at our firesides, not a tale of the 
camp is suffered to disturb us, nor the howlings of inter- 
nal faction, to awaken our fears of the immediate return 
of anarchy or discord. The Lord hath strengthened the 
bars of thy gates, he hath ordained peace for thee in 
thy borders. We lie down in quiet and rise without the 
interruption of our tranquillity. 

6. We are in the next place in possession of plenty. 
In our country the industrious poor have competence, 
the rich, abundance, and both have something to impart. 
He who covereth the heavens with clouds, who pre- 
pareth rain for the earth, who makes the grass to grow 
upon the mountains and corn in the valleys, has given 
food to the hungry, he hath preserved the stranger, he 
hath helped the fatherless and widow. The cruise is 
not emptied nor the barrel of meal exhausted. At de- 
struction and famine he has bidden us laugh, and bless- 
ed with increase the labors of the field. He feedeth 
thee with the finest of the wheat, he hath increased 
their kine and their sheep, and their oxen are strong to 
labor. The earth is satisfied with his beneficence. 

7. In the next place w 7 e are in the possession of 
health. Our life our reason our immortality our liber- 
ty security and plenty, though always valuable, have a 
peculiarly delicious flavor when crowned with the abil- 
ity, freely, to enjoy them. This ability is partially sup- 
plied by the ease the soundness the health of the 
body. Laboring with disease and having no rest in our 
bones, we are not in a capacity so richly to enjoy any 



11 

of these blessings. Pain, like the whirlpool, draws eve- 
ry thing into its vortex, and having a direct tendency 
to sink the spirits, unfits the soul in some degree for its 
due valuation of remaining sources of affection. Dis- 
ease abridges us of our liberty, puts out of tune the del- 
icate organ of our pleasures, and changes peace and 
plenty into property merely, instead of the means of 
enjoyment. But when all the functions of the body 
are unimpeded, and the ten thousand strings of the ma- 
chine plays each its part, man must be an ingrate indeed, 
if he fail either to enjoy or to improve, to be thank- 
ful or to bless. Yet such are our exposures, from the 
structure and condition of our frame, that perfect health 
is one of the rarest gifts of God. See how he swells 
our debt then, when to all the blessings enumerated he 
adds the healing of all our diseases, the redemption of 
our life from destruction, and the crowning us with this 
choicest of all animal blessings. 

8. But long as is this list of the mercies of God, we 
have not yet exhausted them. The means of useful 
knowledge come next in review, to remind us of our 
obligations and to lead us to the devout and grateful 
contemplation of him who requireth that which is past. 
These means with us, with the people of New-England, 
emphatically, are universal. Tiie number and character 
of our schools, well called free schools, leave us without 
a rival on the globe. In a degree unknown to most 
countries, our children possess facilities for instruction 
in useful knowledge, which render it a common, an 
universal blessing. The elements of knowledge sufii- 
cient to fit the youth of all classes for usefulness in soci- 
ety, and to preserve them from dishonoring the ration- 
al nature, may be attained in every village. To such 



12 

an extent, the poor and the rich have equal advantages. 
A system of favoritism is precluded, and against a cor- 
rupt influence, if those who have the regulation of 
schools are not grossly wanting to themselves, the mor- 
als of the young are secured. At the same time, their 
minds are disciplined and nourished, and their manners 
formed to decorum. So that with the ordinary bless- 
ing of God, it ultimately rests with the parent and 
guardian in every society, whether their children shall 
be trained to public usefulness and personal worth, or 
led on in the beaten paths of ignorance, vice, and dis- 
grace. Every little community of course will be known 
by the character of its school, and whoever has the 
heart of a parent, and whoever are the firm friends of 
virtuous liberty and of man, will find their names writ- 
ten on the door posts of these little seminaries of order, 
knowledge, and morality. What did not our fathers 
sacrifice, to bequeathe us such a blessing ! What of pa- 
rental fidelity has he remaining to sacrifice, who does 
nothing to perpetuate the blessing to society when he 
shall have gone to rest. 

9. You are, over all, in possession of the brightest gift 
of Almighty love. I need not name the gospel of Jesus 
Christ, comprehending every good, in possession or re- 
version, which man can ask and God bestow. The 
pure word of God, uncorrupted by tradition, unsophisti- 
cated by the reasonings and embellishments of men — 
a star from heaven, to allure and guide us to the very 
spot from whence it came — a gift, to all who receive it 
in love, ensuring redemption from unnumbered ills, and 
restoration to hopes to glories and to triumphs, of incal- 
culable greatness and unquestionable permanence — a 
light, to which, unless w r e take heed, it were better for 



13 

us to hare been brutes or stones or to have never been 
at all — a light to follow which, is to secure the object 
for which all the holj have labored through the whole 
period of their existence, and without the attainment of 
which, all their future existence will be but the labor 
and sorrow of an ever dying spirit. 

Privileged men ! And happy they who abuse not 
their privilege ! Thrice happy ears that hear the joy- 
ful sound ! On whom, without their previous solicitation 
or consent, God has exhausted the treasures of redeem- 
ing love. 

The ordinances of the gospel, no less than the gos- 
pel itself are ours, and the innumerable blessings grow- 
ing out of them and interwoven with them. The privi- 
leges of social worship, the pleasures of ministering and 
receiving christian consolation, and the long catalogue 
of joys connected with our religious favors might, by an 
enumeration, swell too much our list though not too 
much our gratitude. 

Nor let it be forgotten that for these means of sal- 
vation, our obligations are nothing abated, by reason of 
their inefficiency on our hearts, since it is owing solely 
to our own temper if they do not effect that salvation. 
The friends who have replenished my table with the 
first fruits of all their increase, have the same claim up- 
on my gratitude, whether I receive and enjoy them 
and the giver in them, or through pride and the 
love of independence, return them on their generous 
hands. 

II. But it is time to ask, how came you by these 
blessings ? To whom, to what, are you indebted for 
these unmeasured mercies ? Who is their author ? 
What their procuring cause ? Is it that man, who by 



14 

the terms on which his maker suspended his existence, 
is doomed to excision from life and hope, has over- 
reached Jehovah ? or satisfied him that the original 
terms of his favor were rigid and unjust ? Let me point 
you rather to the interposition of him who though he 
knew no sin, was made a sin-offering for us ; who when 
the first covenant was broken offered by his personal 
privations, in behalf of man, to provide at once a new 
covenant for him, and to secure upon an equally broad 
foundation, the rights and righteousness of God. That 
offer, stayed the direct and immediate course of justice. 
It blunted the weapon aimed at the sinner's heart, 
and ready at the instant of transgression, to sever the 
last cord of life. It respited lost man. The offer sav- 
ed the extinction of the race, and Christ's actual 
mediation procured us those blessings, the voluntary 
privation of which, gave the beasts of the forest a pre- 
eminence of condition over the Son of God. Yes, that 
humiliation which reduced him to the form of a servant 
and the degradation of a malefactor, procured us all 
these blessings. Not a benefit we partake, not a good 
we possess, not a privilege we enjoy, comes through 
any other channel, has any other procuring cause. 
Man eats his bread at the price of blood. Nor was it 
merely the blood of our fathers, or of the oppressed 
African, which enriched the fields whence our bread is 
derived, but of our fathers' Lord and Savior, Jesus 
Christ. He embraced the condition of man, he 
took upon himself man's personal obligation to per- 
fect obedience, man's subjection to the personal en- 
durance of the curse. From glory he descended to ig- 
nominy, from empire to servitude, from the honors of 
the Creator's throne to the contempt of the abject crea- 



15 

tures on his footstool. The spear of justice pierced 
his heart. By the opening of that fountain, those 
streams of benevolence began to pour upon the world, 
which to this day have overflown its banks with bless- 
ings. There alone is found the fountain of life, at 
which man in earth and heaven is to be forever suppli- 
ed ; and all the minor blessings in possession, which have 
been now recalled to mind, have their source in that 
benevolence, and run in the channel of that mediation. 
Thus it is that in the grace of Christ our every joy 
commences : 

" And at his name, 

" The eager heart springs up and leaps for joy. 
" Can it forget the vast, vast debt it owes him? 

"Let it then 

" Forg-et the use and privilege of reason, 

" Be banish'd from the commerce of mankind, 

" To wander in the desert among- brutes, 

" To bear the various fury of the seasons, 

" The midnight's cold and noontide's scorching heat, 

"To be the scorn of earth and curse of heaven !" 

Thus it is that David, in the spirit of grateful adoration, 
runs up the swoln streams of present good, and finds 
their source in the rock which was smitten in the 
parched wilderness : Thou hast ascended on high, thou 
hast led captivity captive, thou hast received gifts for 
men, yea for the rebellious also, that the Lord God 
might dwell among them. Mark the application which, 
with holy transport, the infallible teacher enabled him 
to make of this doctrine of the christian mediation : 
blessed said he, be the Lord, who daily loadeth us with 
his benefits, even the God of our salvation. 



16 

If this view of the subject be just, we need no far- 
ther evidence that the poverty of Jesus Christ is the 
riches of the world. His death our life, his life the light 
of men. 

Where then let it be answered can gratitude, whose 
sacred fires are on this anniversary to be lighted up in 
every dwelling and in every breast, where can grati- 
tude commence her service and whence derive her ex- 
istence and her glory, save from the cross of our Lord 
Jesus Christ. He who is not thankful for his mediation 
is religiously thankful for nothing ; since that mediation 
is his only medium of enjoyment. O who among us has 
yet to begin the exercise of this holy emotion, and does 
not now cordially say, thanks be unto God for his un- 
speakable gift. 

Who henceforth will live, but unto Jesus — both the 
author and medium of his present life and of eternal 
salvation to all who obey him. Who a moment can con- 
template his immortality, without humble and delight- 
ful reference to him, who has brought it to light in the 
gospel. Who can taste the sweets of liberty, and in 
running back to the source of such enjoyment, overlook 
the benevolent servitude of him whom God anointed to 
give liberty to the captive and the opening of the pris- 
on house to them who were bound. Who can triumph 
in his enviable security of life and limb and property, 
and by an evil heart of unbelief withold from Jesus 
Christ, the homage of a grateful heart ! 

Who can enjoy the multiplied comforts of a state of 
peace, and forget the prince to the influence of whose 
laws and government, he owes his exemption from all 
the calamities of foreign and domestic contention. Who 



17 

indulged with plenty, can fail to employ it in the ser- 
vice of him who had not where to lay his head, and who 
receives as done to himself, whatever is well done for 
those he came to save. 

Who, possessing the means of useful knowledge and 
the high and distinctive privileges of that gospel which 
came only by the bounty of Jesus Christ, will practical- 
ly deny his obligations to imitate the bounty, and fail, 
by such a sacrifice as he can make, to extend these 
blessings to the whole family of man. 

Who, in short, not lost to every holy emotion and to 
the most reasonable service, will not cheerfully conse- 
crate himself, soul body and substance, to him from 
whose unconstrained grace he has derived that sub- 
stance, that body, that soul, that self, and beholding his 
disinterestedness be changed into the same image from 
glory to glory, and hasten to be with him, where by a 
spotless life, he may forever most worthily advance his 
praise. 

Beloved hearers, take in conclusion, the well meant 
admonition of a stranger. You are now about to retire 
from the sanctuary : to exchange the notes of praise for 
the festivities and social pleasures of domestic life. 
And when you see around you the children and friends 
which swell the obligations of your existence, and before 
you the emblems of the divine bounty, let not your 
hearts forget, let them not coldly acknowledge, the 
friend of sinners. Can you banish from the chief place 
in your affections, him to whom you are primarily in- 
debted for all these blessings ; and deprive him of your 
confidence on whom alone you depend for their contin- 
uance ? While in virtue of his sacrifice, you are. invited 



18 

to taste and see that the Lord is good, will you forego 
such blessedness, and deny to him in any of the dwell- 
ings he has built and furnished for you, a place to lay 
his head ? 

Holy Redeemer! Look down into our hearts from 
thy richly merited throne, and while pleading by these 
purchased enjoyments for admission there, help us, 
each, to swear eternal allegiance to thee as our king, 
eternal devotion to thy service as our supreme benefac- 
tor, and immortal love and gratitude to thee as our de- 
liverer from death. If we iorget thee, O fountain of 
love, let our right hand forget her cunning, let our 
tongue cleave to the roof of our mouth, if we prefer 
not thy favor and service above our chief joy. 



LRB , 



